New York marks the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on Friday, with President Donald Trump attending a ceremony at the Pentagon while Vice President JD Vance and four former presidents join commemorations at Ground Zero, where victims’ relatives will read the names of those killed.
Issued on: 11/09/2026 -
By: FRANCE 24
New York commemorates the 25th anniversary of the devastating September 11, 2001 attacks Friday with a ceremony marked by US President Donald Trump's absence and right-wing outrage at the attendance of the city's first Muslim mayor.
Trump will pay his respects at the Pentagon, not New York, where hijacked planes destroyed the World Trade Center and killed most of the 2,977 total victims on that world-altering day.
Vice President JD Vance and Trump's four living predecessors -- Republican George W. Bush, who was in office during the attacks, and Democrats Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton -- are all expected at the "Ground Zero" site in lower Manhattan.
No one will give speeches at the ceremony, while bereaved family members will read out the names of all of those killed and a bell rung to mark major moments during the attack.
"Memorials like this and discussions about those events are an important part of keeping it alive and understanding how we prevent tragedies like this from ever happening again," said Robert Kafka, a Chicagoan in his 60s visiting the 9/11 Memorial.
Alongside the former presidents will be Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the Big Apple's first Muslim mayor, despite a campaign urging him to stay away spearheaded by the right-wing New York Post and former mayor Rudy Giuliani.
A petition, which has gathered more than 100,000 signatures, accuses Mamdani of associating with unspecified individuals who are "dismissive of American institutions or insufficiently critical of extremist ideologies."
"It's concerning to me that the mayor is being treated differently simply because he is Muslim," city council member Shahana Hanif told CNN.
Mamdani won plaudits however for recently revealing thousands of documents showing what city officials knew about toxicity levels of the air in Lower Manhattan following the attacks.
After the initial dust cloud that followed the collapse of the World Trade Center, months of pollution and lingering dust ensued, causing cancers from which thousands of New Yorkers still suffer today.
'Toxic air'
"People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air," Mamdani said Tuesday.
Nineteen Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked four planes on that nearly cloudless day in 2001. Two jets slammed into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, causing the iconic 110-story buildings to collapse.
A third plane struck the Pentagon, while a fourth crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers fought back.
Beyond those killed on September 11, more than 9,400 other people have died from 9/11-related illnesses, according to the federal program established to provide medical care to those affected.
Some 100 million Americans were not even born or are too young to remember the tragic events.
Logan Miller, 32, lost his uncle during the attacks, and his grandfather to 9/11-related illness in the aftermath.
"I think the next generation just can't fathom what actually transpired and how someone could be impacted by that, and so I actually find them asking more questions," he told AFP.
Huge crowds are expected to gather in Lower Manhattan for the memorial service.
The Secret Service has erected a security ring of steel around the site of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.
Police commissioner Jessica Tisch said an anti-drone team would be deployed as a precaution, but stressed there was no intelligence of a specific threat to the gathering.
Al-Qaeda meanwhile has marked the anniversary by releasing a video showing images of late leader Osama bin Laden and his son Hamza, who Trump said in 2019 had also been killed.
Ahead of the memorial, a drone show with 2,977 lights rose above New York Harbor, one for each person killed in the attacks.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
25 years on, 9/11 continues to cast a long shadow over the US
Alongside the thousands of Americans killed on 9/11, dozens of Europeans lost their lives that day — and 25 years on, some of the people accused of being behind the attacks have still not faced justice.
A quarter of a century after hijacked planes struck New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, the attacks of 11 September 2001 remain lodged in the American psyche more firmly than almost any other event of the past 25 years.
A new Ipsos poll finds that roughly half of US adults, unprompted, name 9/11 among the most significant events of their lifetime — ahead of the Covid-19 pandemic, the elections of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and Hurricane Katrina of 2005.
Nine in ten say the attacks changed the country "a great deal" or "quite a bit," and most Americans can still recall exactly where they were when they heard the news.
Yet despite that lasting wound, only around one in ten plan to actively mark Friday's anniversary - for those that do a moment of silence and the flying of the flag are the most common gestures.
Confidence in the government's ability to prevent another attack has also declined steadily since the record highs recorded in the days after 2001.
What's planned for the 25th anniversary?
Commemorations will unfold across the three sites. In New York, victims' relatives will gather on the Memorial plaza to read aloud the names of those killed, punctuated by seven moments of silence — one more than in previous years, added to honour those who have since died of 9/11-related illnesses.
Ceremonies will also take place at the Pentagon in Arlington and at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Trump will not attend the New York ceremony this year, opting to speak at the Pentagon instead.
Vice President JD Vance will go to Ground Zero - the area where the first search for survivors in began - while former presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are also expected to attend the New York event.
Why is it called 9/11?
For some, the shorthand can seem puzzling. The date was the eleventh day of the ninth month but the American convention of writing dates with the month-first leads to "9/11" which also mirrors how the emergency number 911 is dialled in the US.
How many Europeans died in 9/11?
While nearly 3,000 Americans died in the event, hundreds of foreign nationals were also among the dead. Estimates place the number of non-American victims at roughly 372, drawn from around 60 countries.
Britain suffered the heaviest toll of any country besides the US, with 67 nationals killed. Germany, Italy, Ireland and other European states also lost citizens, many of them financial workers employed at or visiting the World Trade Center.
American financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald occupied floors 101 through 105 of the World Trade Center's North Tower, directly above the impact zone of American Airlines Flight 11.
The company employed a number of Europeans and in total 658 employees were killed that day - the largest loss of life of any individual firm.
Number of Europeans killed in 9/11 attacks:
- United Kingdom — 67
- Germany — 11
- Italy — 10
- Ireland — 6
- Poland — 6
- Portugal — 5
- France — 4
- Romania — 4
- FR Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) — 2
- Sweden — 2
- Switzerland — 2
- Belarus, Belgium, Lithuania, Moldova, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Ukraine - 1 per country
What happened to the perpetrators?
All 19 hijackers died carrying out the attacks - 15 were Saudi nationals, two from the United Arab Emirates, and one from Egypt and one from Lebanon.
Behind them stood the wider terrorist al-Qaeda network who claimed direct responsibility for the attacks. Osama bin Laden, the group's leader, evaded capture for almost a decade before being killed by US special forces in Pakistan in 2011.
His eventual successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was killed in a drone strike in Kabul in 2022.
The self-described "mastermind" of the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and has been held at Guantánamo Bay since 2006 charged with the first-degree murder of 2,977 people.
A US military judge has now set his long-delayed trial to begin in June 2028, alongside several alleged co-conspirators, following a collapsed 2024 plea deal that would have seen the men admit guilt in exchange for the death penalty being removed from sentencing options.
Proceedings have dragged for over two decades amid disputes over evidence obtained through the use of torture, including waterboarding, at secret CIA sites.
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